


Fool Me Once

by ladybugkay



Category: The Gifted (TV 2017)
Genre: Angst, Blink/Thunderbird - Freeform, Canon Compliant, Clarice Fong/John Proudstar - Freeform, Episode 1x05, Episode Related, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-10
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2019-01-31 08:54:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12678579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladybugkay/pseuds/ladybugkay
Summary: Mid-episode 1x05 and spoilers for that episode.  The unpleasant, occasionally incoherent insides of Clarice's mind during her confrontation with John.





	Fool Me Once

**Author's Note:**

> This is my attempt to get inside Clarice's head during the events of the episode. She's my favourite character on the show and this is the first fanfic I've written in a long time, but this scene really got to me.

She asks him.

She asks him because she’s stupid and because she already knows the answer; she just wants to know what he’s going to say. If he’s going to lie to her.

He doesn’t answer, which is answer enough, and wow, okay, so that hurt a hell of a lot more than she thought it would when she knew going into this conversation how it would play out.

It wasn’t as if she’d let herself believe she’d found a place where anyone wanted her around just because they liked her and not because they wanted to use her for something. Come on, she’s not that naive. But okay, so sue her; she thought maybe she’d found the first good guy in a really long time and that possibly there was some little bit of something there lurking behind his eyes that made her insides feel like a warm jelly donut. But then Dreamer blew that right out of the water with a puff of purple mist and a whole metric shit-tonne of harsh, cold reality.

So Clarice gets it. She’s kind of used to it by now. Who wouldn’t be? With eyes like hers, she’s been a freak since birth, and that’s something you can’t hide. Sometimes she wonders what it must be like for mutants who can pass for boring old regular assholes. Does it hurt more when people turn on you after they find out the truth? Or does the tenuous security of the lie balance out the betrayal and it was all worth it for a few moments of normal and blissful ignorance?

She’s inclined to think she got the puny-ass short end of the deal, but then, she’s just cynical like that.

Jaded.

Bitter, even.

Hey, if the shoe fits, wear the shit out of it until it becomes a statement, right? That’s always been her motto. And no one can say she hasn’t taken that philosophy and run with it until bitter and jaded might as well be her middle names. Clarice is comfortable with that. She has her role and she owns it, and she’s proud of every untrusting inch of her soul. She is who she is, and she makes no apologies. People can take her or they can leave her, and she doesn’t blame all the ones who’ve left her, because it’s their right and she refuses to make herself into someone she’s not just to play nice and keep the peace and have people like her.

Which is why what they’ve done to her pisses her off so fucking much. She’s worked long and hard to be this much of a hardass, and she’ll be damned if she lets some manipulative asshole make her into someone malleable and downright eager to please. Clarice is disgusted by herself and what they’ve turned her into, just because they could and it was expedient. She swore to herself a long time ago that she wasn’t going to let anyone use her, and they’ve gone ahead and done that and she didn’t even know. They didn’t even tell her, and they think they’re the good guys.

Stupid.

So damn stupid.

Don’t they know there are no good guys? No shades of grey. Everyone’s an asshole, on the take, or out-and-out evil. Take your pick. Choose your poison. The wheel keeps spinning and where it stops nobody knows.

Watch the dancing fools with their pipe dreams of a united underground cough it all up on the ballroom floor and ask for seconds while they pat each other on the back and sing songs of praise for their glorious victories, all the while ignoring the people in chains just behind the curtains who ensured their success against their will.

She is so sick of hypocrites and the way they justify their own unforgivable acts. Someone save her from self-righteous, purblind do-gooders. She always winds up right back where she started, with a knife in her back and the feel of razorblades in her throat as she swallows it all down.

Here she goes again.

Clarice watches John, and she asks him a question - not the most important one or the one that means the most, but the one she can’t seem to stop herself from coming out of her mouth - and she watches him, waiting for his answer. As she waits, she tries not to think about why she needs to know what he will end up saying.

John can’t even really meet her eyes, right now, and hey, look, everybody: Mr. Righteous feels bad about what he and his psycho mind-warping sort-of-not-really girlfriend did to her mind. He’s got a conscience. It should matter to her. It should mean something that he feels guilty. Or maybe it shouldn’t. Because only a few seconds later, there he goes, justifying the necessity of Dreamer’s actions, and wow. 

Wow.

That’s the kicker right there.

That’s the steel-toed boot to the vag that makes all the bullshit they spout here at the grand ole’ Mutant Underground just the same bullshit they peddle everywhere she’s been. Every villain is a hero in his own mind, and a person’s only as important as they are useful. As long as they’re useful.

And John Proudstar is no more or less than just the same as all the other people she’s ever come across.

A shame, that. She was just starting to like the guy.

Or maybe it’s just her. That’s what her mother used to tell her, anyway. Don’t you think you’re anything special, Clarice Fong. You’re just a means to an end. A power to get the job done until you can’t or until they have no use for you anymore, and all of a sudden, Clarice Fong is done with this. She’s stayed in one place too long, let this shitty movement and its allies tie her down and make her weak. The time has long since passed when she should have cut her ties and leapt right out of this hellhole and its endless complications. Just when she thought she’d wised up and faced the unadorned truth with her eyes wide open, she discovers one more veil of wool in front of her that she has to strip away. It’s like the world keeps dropping illusions in her path, trying to trick her into falling for pretty lies and empty promises.

She’s so done with this place.

There are places to be and people to . . . 

But that’s another story, one she hasn’t got the heart to tell now. All Clarice has left in her is the will to make this stand and extricate herself from a vast pool of quicksand that’s threatening to pull her down by her ankles.

Let’s do this thing and treat herself to a pastry or two in the morning.

She gives the dog one last pat, because he’s the one thing Clarice is going to miss when she goes, and then she tells John she’s going to uncomplicate things for him. Simple things up. She walks past him, her hands moving into position as she rounds the corner, and she doesn’t know if it’s the sound of the portal or the finality in her voice or the determination in her stride that clues him in, but she hears him call out to her for half a heartbeat until the world closes up behind her and cuts him off in the middle of her name and it’s

just

that

easy. 

Just like it was all those times before when her choices boiled down to stay and give her life away or run and live to fight and scream another day.

So what if freedom tastes like burnt toast and smells like ass?

Outside the building, she trips down the stairs and doesn’t look back, opening another portal to the highway and another beyond that, again and again until she’s so far gone they couldn’t find her if they tried. Though Clarice is smart enough to know he didn’t even try.

The darkness of the storage locker she winds up in swallows her eagerly as she comes through a portal and trips over some random person’s precious crap and curses viciously, catching herself against the wall of the locker with a deafening clang. It’d be just her luck if some underpaid, overly self-important jackass was playing security today and decided to actually give a good goddamn about someone else’s dusty junk, but she holds her breath and her hands steady for ten minutes before deciding no one is coming and flopping onto a trunk that in no way promotes flopping. 

Looking at the ceiling above her and watching her breath puff out in the frigid air of the storage facility, Clarice allows herself one indulgence.

“John Proudstar is hot as fuck,” she says aloud. Just once, because the truth will set you free or something and some truths are a lot more fun to acknowledge than others.

Then she closes her eyes, turns her mind off, and drifts to sleep with a solemn vow not to dream of anything that she hasn’t lived through on her own, even if it means a lifetime of nightmares and regret.

Her mind is her own, and Clarice Fong owns every last monster behind her eyes. She is stronger than what has been done to her, and she will prove that if it’s the last thing she does.


End file.
